Date: March 15th, 2024
Label: Nuclear Blast
Now we’ll visit another country whose metal scene isn’t too well known. And this is said that one of its northern or eastern neighbor-lands is iconic. Average metalhead knows maybe few, in the best case (it seems I’m in this elite – I fell in love with Evil Sinner when I heard the only, self-titled, album of this horde on radio 1989), ensembles coming from Belgium, I think. And the truth is this country has many to offer and there’s quite a huge number of interesting bands. Anyways one of these who’s not anonymous, maybe even that’s the best-known horde from there (even if not everyone knows they’re coming just from Belgium), is found 1995 and coming from Beveren band called Aborted. Well, the truth is it became an international band a long time ago – the only Belgian over there is vocalist Sven de Caluwe (he’s also the only original member) but headquarter still is mentioned before, not too huge a city. Anyways, “Vault of Horrors” is their eleventh full-length, which due to quite often changes in line-up, especially in the critical position of guitarists, is a good result in my opinion.
This is a so called concept album which means songs are somehow connected with each other and stuff is a kind of a story, tale. In that case it’s about lyrics’ topic: all ten songs are based, or probably better to say: inspired by another movie. What kind of movies catch all, except the bassist, musicians’ imagination? Well, I think it’s not too hard to guess. Title of the record says a lot, doesn’t it? So, it’s totally unnecessary to explain which film genre it’s about. The same is with Aborted’s music creativity in my opinion. I somehow can’t imagine there’s someone among readers who has never heard at least a word about the band, but since everything’s possible nowadays… Yes, that’s old-school death metal. But it’s hard to say which school dominates here. I mean, you can hear a lot of influences from the American one, but at the same time some Dutch touches, first, but at the same moment that’s quite unique creativity, even if there’s nothing edge-breaking in that. In any case, Aborted presents a mix of brutality and technique. Technical skills, the same as several tricks (which happen very often) are of course easiest to recognize in guitars’ play, which results from characteristics of not only metal itself, but also rock in general. But believe me, if you listen to “Vault…” carefully enough then you’ll notice the same thing when it takes drums and even bass as well. I hear it here also, and I always did it (I mean other albums of the ensemble) with some touches of Grindcore or even other subgenres of our beloved music. They’re very delicate and are more about feelings than strict music stuff, but still possible to hear for experienced ears to notice. Vocalization is variable, too. This is the whole time some kind of growling, but from time to time you’re able to hear, let’s call it, clear scream. That’s what makes this creativity unique, and this is really hard to confuse Aborted with any other ensemble.
Of course, what’s also the hallmark of the band as well, some melodies come here and there. But don’t worry, they’re at the same time sick enough and don’t disturb so much as intensify the brutality, which’s coming out from every entire sound of this full length! We have to do it here with quite various tempos, sometimes it’s even slow, sometimes quite fast – guys mix them and go smoothly from one to the other. I have always been a huge fan of Aborted’s music so if I was in your shoes, I wouldn’t be thinking about buying this album for a second. You can make a choice between several formats, of course. The fact is the price, especially for a vinyl (there are two versions available) is quite high, but in my opinion it’s absolutely worth this money.
Oh, it seems I forgot to write two quite important things. So, I will repair this right now. The first thing is “Vault of Horrors” was released by a giant and probably the oldest still existing label dedicated to Metal – Nuclear Blast March 15th. The second piece of info you can be interested in is that in every track participated another guest musician. Amen!
